#real world advice

[cubbihue]

It would be nice to hear from Wanda and Cosmo! It is kind of nice that you guys have two children like your own family does. Are you two still close to your siblings? Wanda has a sibling and Cosmo also have a sibling just like Timmy and Peri. Do they share some sibling stories to your children?

Wanda and Cosmo both reconnected with their siblings shortly after having Peri. Or, well. More like Blonda reentered their lives once she realized she had a baby nephew. Eventually, they slowly patched things up the more Blonda came to visit Peri.

Schnozmo was dragged back kicking and screaming. Mama Cosma refuses to have her sons live estranged lives now that she has a grandchild in the picture. Schnozmo doesn't know how to handle children, but he's doing his best.

Peri likes Schnozmo because he makes silly noises and funny stories. But he prefers Blonda's theatrics much more and loves playing Dress Up with her.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[thegreatyin]

ive officially entered the stage of OC brainrot where i start putting him in outfits for fun and (zero) profit

[i-really-like-phrogs]

When someone else’s art is so good you physically can’t look at it because of artistic jealousy

[randomnoteforfuturereference]

Broke: Macho grandpa being homophobic when the grandkid comes out.

Woke: Macho grandpa being accepting right off the bat.

Bespoke: Grandpa offering hilariously out-of-date and borderline-problematic dating advice after the coming out.

[greenerteacups]

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

THE BEST OF SHENKO 1/?

The end of the world has a way of reminding you of all the things you forgot to say do. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (2021)

[recurring-polynya]

i'm never entirely sure if the term "captain-class" includes lieutenants (personally, I think it's people who have or are close to having bankai, which would obviously include Ikkaku so whatever), but assuming he was allowed to pick lieutenants, imagine being Renji and being told to pick the three people you'd most want to have with you to go to another world and wait for a war to crack open

(alternatively, imagine an au where the advance team was abarai & kuchiki & hinamori & kira & hisagi, the shining stars of shin'ou class of 2066 + their favorite sempai)

[anonymousdandelion]

Imagine if all the energy spent on arguing about whether or not Terrible Thing can/should be compared to the Holocaust, was instead spent on actually trying to address Terrible Thing on its own merit.

[wordshaveteeth]

When craft is taught reflexively, within a limited understanding of the canon, it reinforces narrow ideas about whose stories are important and what makes a story beautiful, moving, or good.

- Matthew Salesses, Craft in the Real World

[jtl-fics]

i feel that FF is too fucking anxious to even consider sex, with anyone. like... 'oh my god someone would have to see me NAKED for that? what if i make a weird noise or i finish too quickly and they make fun of me? what if i do it wrong and they hate me?!' haha i love this poor sweet fool so much. -@stabbyfoxandrew

FF isn't even going to KNOW he's DATING someone until like a year in and by then he's like "WHAT DO I DO???"

Depending on any awakening feelings the options are:

He's brave about it and says the truth: might result in either the world's most AWKWARD conversation, a slap to the face, and maybe a reputation as a Lady Killer that he is unaware of.

He's a coward about it and tries to keep going until Andrew pulls the full high school with Aaron model out of his back pocket and gets the other person to give up. Andrew thinks that person was just pushing their feelings onto FF (which they were because FF at no point was like: "yeah we're dating") and maybe saw one too many instances of that person trying to initiate something FF was not comfy with so he MAY have gone a little overboard

He actually has feelings for them and prepares to NEVER mention it EVER again but basically has a freak out because "FUCK WHAT'S OUR ANNIVERSARY?"

When / if sex comes up in his relationships I think his performance anxiety would absolutely play a part in it and he goes to the most pro-sex person he knows for advice.

It's just that....that person is Nicky Hemmick.

His plight will never end.

[xenascribbles]

do i have any followers or mutuals that speak korean? i am very distrustful of google results, especially since the main “resources” to show up was wiki and urban dictionary. i want to know how the word “shekki” actually fits into the language from someone that speaks it. the nuances to it that google search can’t give me.

[mirchloe]

while i'm still logged in, i think my biggest story criticism for pn2 is how it's sasha reprimanding raz for what he does to hollis...when sasha is in the same boat lmao. now, i'm not saying "bad writing" or something, but it does contrast with sasha's character seen in the first game.

sasha is the one inviting students for advanced training that isn't quite approved. using the brain tumbler to get into kid's heads is definitely not permitted by the motherlobe - it circumvents the psychic kids protection act or whatever it's called - but he's doing it anyway. with the kid's consent, this is seen as acceptable in sasha's eyes, in which he is then allowed to gather data while the student is in a seemingly safe environment - or so it seems, as with whatever happened to bobby wasn't good. (i know some interpret this as a bad trip to the gpc, but since bobby freaks out specifically over the red button, i think it had to do with sasha's training and the brain tumbler. he also was fine to trap maloof in the gpc, and if he was so afraid of the gpc itself, he would've steered clear from it and just kept locking maloof in the outhouses.)

through sasha, raz gets a pretty warped idea of what's acceptable to do in someone's mind. i think i would've liked to see some acknowledgment of sasha's own actions in that specific cutscene where he chews in to raz. maybe admit that his own ethics were a bit skewed when he took raz under his wing for advanced training while still drilling home how raz was in the wrong for what happened to hollis and the abrupt, dangerous changes in her mind (regardless of any peer pressure from the interns). it just makes me cock my head to the side knowing that it's sasha being that upset when just days ago, he was the one showing raz his slightly dubious nature when it comes to getting consent to enter a mind.

[meeelis]

Best choice

[shebrakesforrainbows]

Kinda scary how okay proshippers are with hanging out with baby rapers under the guise of "they only want it in fiction" 😂😂😂

[bitchfromthecrypt]

Pinocchio's story feels like an allegory for being a transracial adoptee

[aphverse-confessions]

i find people who include fantasy racism, sexism and homophobia in their rewrites for ‘added drama’ and ‘issues’ are extremely unoriginal and lacking creativity. if your go to conflict is always fascism just because you have no creativity to try and come up with anything else besides what you know and is obviously ingrained in your brain, you should sit down and think why your go to awnser is always fascism.

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